Peter Foster wants to be left alone to complete the work of fiction which his autobiography will undoubtedly be. But even the slimy fraudster might recognise as fiction another story which has been widely believed. Cherie Booth, QC, and Cherie Blair are not two different people. They are both married to the Prime Minister and Tony “you can trust me” Blair is not a bigamist.

The saga of the conman, Cherie and an apparent inability, surprising in a lawyer, to recognise the whole truth has pointed up the absurdity of attempts to give the Prime Minister’s wife dual identities. The activities of the chatelaine of 10 Downing Street — or No 10 and part of No 11 in the case of this property-hungry woman — cannot be dissociated from the office that puts her there. This would be so even if the occupant was scrupulous about never using her position as a platform. When she makes speeches and chairs political meetings in the Prime Minister’s residence, any claim to a separate identity is not only nonsensical, but hypocrisy of the highest order.

Yet until now, Cherie has been indulged in her insistence that she should be allowed the luxury of two identities. Thus we have watched meekly while the PM’s wife has donned her QC’s wig and gone into court to challenge the Government on a succession of human rightsrelated cases. Her Matrix Chambers was established to specialise in cases arising from legislation which her husband’s Government had brought on to the statute book.

The shrill voices of the sisterhood will say that there is nothing wrong with that. A wife is entitled to a career and Cherie has built herself a very successful one. Why should she put it on hold just because her husband is Prime Minister?

Well, Cherie herself provided one answer to that last week. In her pathetic public apology for the mess she had landed in, she tried to put the blame on her inability to keep all the balls in the air all the time. Her decision to make her Bristol flats purchase through Foster looked to me more like greed than the effects of time poverty. A busy woman wanting to buy property could employ an accountant or lawyer; only someone in search of a deal would turn to the likes of a man who, even by the tenor of his e-mails, oozed sleaze. And he delivered: a £69,000 discount is worth having, but if it was achieved simply by Foster’s negotiating skills and not the Blair name, it would be somewhat surprising.

Nonetheless, if we take her at her Alastair Campbell-scripted word, and believe that Cherie is finding life a bit of a struggle, what with all that charity work on top of being wife, mother, award presenter etc, then there is an easy answer. Her husband is earning a rather better than average salary of £177,000 and the family’s outgoings are limited, with accommodation in town and country provided and gleeful hosts prepared to offer holiday hospitality. So Cherie could do what plenty of career women do, particularly with a young family, and put her career on hold for a while.

But even if her performance was the sham it appeared, and she is happy to continue trying to keep all those balls in the air, she should not. Politics is not like other careers and being PM is not like any other job. It is big enough for two.

Over the weekend, those anonymous “friends of the Blairs” who have a knack of bumping into political journalists, were letting it be known that the Prime Minister felt guilty for leaving Cherie alone while he got on with running the country. Touching though this sentiment was presumably meant to be, it showed only that Mr Blair has also been bullied into accepting his wife’s view of her role.

But Mrs Blair has had her own way long enough. Rather than embarrass the Government, the country and her family any more, she should accept that she has only one identity. Being the Prime Minister’s wife should be enough to keep even the most ambitious individual busy. And it will not be for ever.







The author is Business and City Editor, and mother of three children — but not the Prime Minister’s wife.

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